Kids and Mess

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Started 1 year ago by ozegal
Latest reply from STLMom
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ozegal
Member

Just wanted to know what everyone's take on kids rooms being messy.

At the moment, my daughters share (11yo step daughter and 2.5yo) and my son 9mo is in the nursery. I want to move soon, because I think all kids should have their own rooms, mainly because the young ones are different sexes and our 11yo shouldn't be sharing a room with small children once she is a teen because of their diffrent interests etc and teen shouldn't have to hide homework or jewellery from room mate so it doesn't get spoiled.

Because my kids are young, I control how tidy their rooms are by tidying and directing tidying, but as they grow older, I think I'll be cool with the idea that its their space, but its still my house (ie, keep it tidy cos we don't want vermin to hide in any mess etc. and I don't want to trip over in the dark)... Well, I'll be cool with it as long as I can keep the doors closed when its messy and as long as its not unclean. So they can choose where things go, but I will insist that it goes there and not on the floor :)

What does everyone else do with their kids rooms?

Posted 1 year ago #
Zora
Member

My daughter's room was cleaned and tidied by ME. I didn't make her get rid of things, or throw them out for her, but I would buy containers and sort things into containers. Frex, I bought her a tackle box for her nail polish after the little bottles started to proliferate. I would clean her room once a week, which was enough to keep things under control. It was a pain, lifting and dusting all the little tchotchkes.

After my husband left me, she had two rooms, one at my house and one at his. I don't know what her other room looked like :) Probably a lot worse, as my ex is a packrat and thinks cleaning is unnecessary.

Posted 1 year ago #
ValH
Member

I don't have any kids, but I can say when my parents did for me (I was not a tidy kid). From about age 8 I was in charge of putting away everything in my room. My mom would help, when I asked, and bought be containers and such to store things. However, when my room got out of control we would have a cleaning day and she would make me put everything away and suggest that maybe it was time to donate some of the toys I no longer wanted. If the room was clean by the evening I would get to watch whatever movie I wanted to watch.

Basically I was in charge of the space, it was the one place that was just mine. It could be as tidy as I wanted or as messy, but she would step in at times to make sure that something was done. Plus, she vacuumed the room, and it would have been impossible to do so with everything cluttering the floor (I lost many Barbie shoes anyways, vacuums loved to find those even when I could not.)

Posted 1 year ago #
STLMom
Member

My kids each have their own room, and they couldn't be more different.
My son has very little in his room, loves to declutter, and doesn't mind cleaning up because there's hardly anything to move. That said, he does need lots of reminders to put his clothes in the laundry basket, etc.
My daughter is a born pack-rat. It takes hours of constant prodding to get her to clean up her floor enough to vacuum it. Sometimes I give up and just clean it up myself. She can't stand to throw anything away, but her dad and I have tossed tons of things over the years without her even noticing, because she has much more stuff than she can keep track of.
I remember that my mom tried to bribe me with cute dollhouse furniture that I would get if I kept my room clean. I never did, and 30 years later my mom gave that furniture to my daughter. Whose room is as messy as mine was! Mom, no fair!

Posted 1 year ago #

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